I recently changed mobile phone services. My previous service was not very strong where I live and I was getting a lot of dropped calls. I looked around and found a service that is socially conscious and donates a portion of the profits to various “progressive nonprofit groups that work on a range of issues.” Wow—I could have phone service and a voice in determining how the donations were distributed!
Since I am on a family plan, I had to order four phones and activate them for use. One phone was a 4-G to 4-G conversion, and that process was simple enough. The hard part was getting all the contact information off the three older phones unto the newer ones. One phone was ten years old, a real relic, and incompatible to its 4-G replacement. The other two phones were flip phones that were being replaced by newer models from the same maker; but, because I was now using a different mobile phone service, the phones were incompatible. At first, I thought I would be able to transfer the contact list from the phone that had Bluetooth technology to the newer one. Unfortunately, the Bluetooth in my old phone could only connect to a head set or car kit; it could not connect with the new phone to transfer the contact list with its hundreds of phone numbers. The only advantage to entering the contact information manually is that I culled the list of numbers that I hadn’t called in ages. I seem to be able to clean my closet out on a regular basis—if I haven’t used it in a year, away it goes—but who ever cleans out their contact list, unless forced to do so?
Spending countless hours entering contact information was the price I paid for not keeping up with technology. Had I purchased a new phone every couple of years, the contact list might have kept pace with the evolving phones. At least, I would have had fewer numbers to enter.
What aggravated me the most, though, was not the hours I lost inputting the numbers; it was the time I spent trying to read the illegible phone manuals. Eight point font is tiny, but, with glasses, still legible. The inline symbols, however, are not—even with a magnifying glass. I would have thought that a company of this size would have field-tested the manuals to assure customer satisfaction. Apparently, it was more concerned about the price-per-page print cost than the reader’s ability to read the text.
It just proves to me that we writers must be mindful of the delivery as well as the content. No matter how well-written our writing is, if our readers cannot access it or—worse—cannot decipher it, we fail to provide value, and, consequently, loose our audience. We as communicators must use our communication tools wisely. But, even with our best intentions, we may inadvertently create a problem for our readers. That is why it pays to listen to them.
Recently, one of my readers commented that she had difficulty distinguishing paragraphs when reading my book on Kindle. I tried various Kindle readers and could not see her problem. It turns out she was enlarging the font, which made the spacing between the paragraphs negligible. I reformatted the file to include first line indents, and that solved the problem. Imagine how many more readers I would have annoyed had I not listened to her.
